Articles Posted in Auto Accident Injury

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An old woman, 95 years of age, is a patient at a certain Staten island hospital. On 9 June 1998, she became comatose, cyanotic and unresponsive after she became disconnected from her ventilator machine. An employee of the hospital heard the old woman’s room alarm sound but the alarm at the nurses’ station failed to sound. Hence, it could not be determined as to how long the old woman remained disconnected from the ventilator. Respirator assistance was then provided to the old woman by the medical staff of the hospital. Thereafter, she was immediately transferred back to the cardiac care unit, which is where she had been prior to the ventilator incident, and there she received intensive therapeutic care and massive blood transfusions. From 10 June 1998 through 11 June 1998, the consulting neurologist indicated in his progress notes that the old woman had a guarded prognosis and was not receptive to outside stimuli. From 12 June 1998 through 17 June 1998, the progress notes indicated that the old woman was improving. The old woman’s neurologist then noted that she was at baseline, neurologically stable. In other words, the old woman’s neurological condition returned to the state that it had been prior to the ventilator disconnection. Thereafter, the hospital took several remedial measures to prevent any future incidents of this type. The hospital’s Code 15 committee reviewed the old woman’s case to decide whether or not it warranted Code 15 treatment, which consists of reporting to the Agency for Health Care Administration or AHCA within fifteen days of the incident, but later voted against such Code 15 treatment, believing that since the old woman recovered to her neurological baseline, no brain damage or brain injury had occurred. Instead of filing the incident as a Code 15, the hospital reported the occurrence as an adverse incident in its Annual Report of Incidents.

Consequently, the AHCA filed an administrative complaint against the hospital and contends that the hospital violated the law by reason of their failure to report a hypoxic event that caused brain damage to a patient as a Code 15 occurrence.

Sometime in December 2000, a formal hearing was held. After that, the administrative Law Judge or ALJ concluded that the old woman did in fact suffer from a brain damage, a transient or temporary brain damage, and the hospital should have reported the incident as a Code 15; and recommended that AHCA had justification to levy a $5,000.00 administrative fine against the hospital.

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Depression is a disease that affects many Americans. In recent years as the unemployment rate has skyrocketed, depression has increased as well. Workers who find themselves in vastly different life circumstances than they had planned for, are likely to begin to suffer from depression even if they never have experienced problems in the past. A person who is injured while on the job and finds themselves disabled is more likely than any other unemployed person to suffer from depression related illnesses. A disabled Nassau worker has gone virtually overnight from being a strong active employed person to being bedridden for several days or weeks and unemployed. The new wording to the Family Medical Leave Act states that if a person is catastrophically injured on the job, their company is only required to keep their job open for them for twelve weeks. At the end of the twelve week period, that injured employee may be fired and a new person hired to fill their job. The days of companies and even government entities standing behind an employee who has been injured on the job are over.

That was the situation that one New York highway department worker found himself in when he was struck by a car while at work. He sustained serious personal injury from this accident in December of 1995. His spinal injury left him disabled and unable to return to work. He began to suffer from depression and in January of 1998, his wife found him dead by his own hand. She filed a request for workers compensation death benefits. Her contention was that her husband committed suicide because of his depression which was directly related to the accident at work. A Workers’ Compensation Law Judge agreed that the wife should be granted death benefits. The Workers’ Compensation Board determined that she should not be awarded death benefits because they found that there was no causal relationship associated to the accident and the husband’s suicide. The wife filed an appeal of their decision.

She based her appeal on the fact that death benefits are deemed appropriate if the work injury results in insanity, brain injury, brain deterioration or a pattern of mental deterioration which may culminate in suicide. She also contends that there was no lawyer on the board to evaluate the application of law in this case. According to the Laws of New York State, in order for this woman to be awarded compensation, she must show that there was a causal link between the accident and her husband’s suicide. In order to demonstrate a causal link, she must present competent medical proof that her husband suffered from a mental deterioration brought on by the accident that ended in him taking his own life. The board is required to give more credence to an opinion based on medical evidence, than they are their own opinions that are not based on medical knowledge.

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A Pensacola, Florida, man is accused of violently pushing his 4-month-old son which caused the child to suffer a traumatic brain injury (TBI). Bond was set for the man at $150,000.

The 20-year-old father, of the 200 block of Marigold Drive was arrested and charged with three separate counts of aggravated child abuse.

As of late last week, he was still in the Escambia County Jail.

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When a baby suffers from a brain injury at birth, it is a devastating event for the entire family. The family is stricken with the knowledge that the happy healthy baby that they were expecting has received a birth injury that will render that child disabled for the rest of their lives. In cases of this nature where medical malpractice is involved, it is especially devastating for the parents. Many problems can affect the medical malpractice lawsuit in these cases. There are generally more than one doctor present at deliveries in hospitals these days. When there is more than one doctor, it can be difficult to determine which doctor deviated from acceptable medical practice of the day.

One case that involved a child who was delivered by an obstetrician in New York City, left this question unanswered. One of the doctors who attended the birth admits that he was negligent, but claims that the obstetrician who was responsible for the delivery of the child was responsible for the larger portion of blame. He contends that he was not involved in the actual delivery or prenatal care of the mother. He contends that the vast majority of brain damage occurred during that time of the delivery and not after the delivery when he became involved in the case. The doctor stated that he was responsible for caring for the newborn infant when the baby born. He stated that the primary injury to the child occurred when the obstetrician who delivered the child failed to administer oxygen to the mother when the child compressed the umbilical cord during labor. The obstetrician failed to notice that the child was not getting enough blood or oxygen through the umbilical cord until the child had been hypoxic for some time.

Following the delivery of the baby, the obstetrician handed the infant off to the Long Island pediatrician who was standing by. He contends that he was negligent because when he observed the child’s blood tests, he noticed that there was a very high bilirubin count. A high bilirubin count is indicative that the child has had a traumatic birth and that the baby may have suffered from a brain injury. He states that he was also negligent in that the child also had a high hematocrit level which would also tend to indicate that the baby had suffered brain damage during birth. If he had acted immediately with appropriate oxygen therapy, there is a chance that the child would not have suffered as severe a brain injury as he did. However, the pediatrician failed to act and some undetermined time after the child was born, it was discovered that the infant was severely brain damaged.

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When an accident occurs that involves a personal injury, it is important that the injured person seeks help immediately. The laws of New York are truncated when it comes to personal injury. They have set limits on many of the areas that involve compensable injury. If a person does not file their claim within a certain period of time, they will be barred from recovering damages at all. By the same token, the person must prove that their injury is serious under the guidelines of the law. The law defines the guidelines that describe an injury as either serious or substantial. It also provides guidelines that establish what permanent loss of use relates to. For a person to recover damages based on these statutes, they must be able to establish that their injury falls into these categories.

A substantial injury is one that demands a change in the person’s lifestyle. A person who has suffered from a substantial or serious injury will have to stop doing many of the activities that they used to be able to do. If a person is able to continue performing their jobs, or handling their home lives in much the same manner that they were conducting themselves prior to the injury, then they have not sustained a serious injury in accordance with the laws of the state of New York. Generally, when a person makes a claim for personal injury as the result of an accident, they must bring forth expert testimony that will support their claim. A claim of serious injury that is not supported by medical evidence will fail. In fact, a claim of serious injury that is supported only by medical expert opinion and not supported by concrete medical tests will likely fail as well. When a person files a claim of this sort, it is critical that they are sure that they can present this type of medical evidence in court.

Sometimes, even having several doctors willing to testify in your behalf can be challenged. In one case from New York, a limousine driver was involved in an accident that resulted in his sustaining multiple injuries that he claimed were serious under the statute. In fact, some of his claims involved the fact that he was deprived the use of some body parts. He also claimed a serious spine injury and brain injury. He had no less than four medical experts testify on his behalf that he was unable to work or perform daily functions that he had once enjoyed based upon the injury that he had sustained.

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A personal injury action arises out of a motor vehicle accident that occurred at the intersection of Oceanside Road and Erwin Place in Oceanside, New York. Among other injuries, the woman suffered a traumatic brain injury.

On June 30, 2010, the Court denied the opponents’ motions for summary judgment to dismiss the woman’s complaint. The Nassau Court determined that, as the woman had yet to testify at her sworn examination before trial, the accused men’s motion for summary judgment must be denied as premature. The Court also determined that because both accused men have failed to demonstrate that the Town of Hempstead Building Zone Ordinances do not apply to them, the motion and cross motion must be denied. Finally, the Court also held that, because the driver’s operation of his motor vehicle while under the influence of alcohol arguably may be deemed by the trier of fact to be a superseding cause of the woman’s injuries, the accused men’s motions for summary judgment to dismiss the woman’s action based in negligence must be denied.

The core of the woman’s allegations against the accused men relates to certain bushes located between the residences, which bushes are alleged to block the view of traffic. The woman alleges that the overgrown nature of the bushes, which she claim are in contravention of height requirements provided in local ordinances, contributed in some measure to the occurrence of the serious traffic accident.

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A Manhattan contractor who owned a home improvement company obtained a contract to renovate a couple’s home. The man worked on the couple’s home: he was up on the roof supervising the repair of the roof when he slipped and fell. He hit his head and sustained a brain injury.

He filed a personal injury complaint against Workmen’s Compensation, against his own company and against the couple who owned the house he was renovating. In that personal injury case, trial was held to determine if the brain injury sustained by the contractor qualifies as a grave injury under the Workmen’s Compensation Law.

During the trial, the contractor adduced proof regarding the extent and nature of his brain injury. His medical experts testified that the contractor had cognitive dysfunction which permanently disabled him from doing any work. The insurance company provided its own expert who conducted a neuropsychological evaluation of the contractor. The expert of the insurance company found that the contractor’s brain injury was severe and traumatic such that he has lost the ability to make decisions required in daily life.

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Defendant American Real Estate Holdings, LP (American), an out-of-possession owner, leased the building where plaintiff’s accident occurred to defendant Levitz Furniture Corporation of Queens (Levitz). The building consisted of a furniture showroom, an office and warehouse space. Prior to plaintiff’s accident, Levitz had sold large furniture shelving rack unit, as well as other similar units, to defendant and third-party plaintiff International Storage Systems, Inc. (International). International was in the business of buying, dismantling, selling and then reinstalling large furniture rack systems. Pursuant to an oral agreement, which is reflected in various invoices and purchase orders, International then hired plaintiff’s employer, third-party and second-third party defendant Heatley Installations (Heatley), to disassemble the furniture rack system and transport it to another location.

A Lawyer said that, plaintiff testified that, just prior to his accident he was in the process of disassembling the free-standing furniture rack system while standing on a particle-board deck located on the third level of the rack. As plaintiff was removing beams from the level above, and dropping them onto the deck, the deck broke, causing him to fall and sustain brain injuries.

At the time of his accident, the Staten Island plaintiff was not utilizing an available order selector provided for use in retrieving furniture at higher levels. An order selector is a piece of equipment resembling a forklift, which has a platform upon which a worker can stand. In addition, although he was wearing the safety belt provided to him by his employer, plaintiff had not properly tethered to the order selector, despite having been directed to do so less than one hour before his accident.

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Personal Injury accidents can have life altering effects on the person who is injured. Sometimes, the problems that the person suffers exceed the physical injuries that have occurred. When a person goes from being active and unimpaired one day to infirmed the next, it is impossible for the person to not have some depression about the change in life circumstances. In some of these cases, the injured person becomes so depressed by the changes in his or her life circumstances that they lose the will to live. In these cases, New York law has stipulated that if the person filing a wrongful death suit must be able to show that there is a causal link between the person’s suicide and the injury that they received at work.

One case that involved this type of wrongful death action involved a man who was injured twice at work. He was injured 14 years before his death and then again five years before his death. In 1945, the decedent was an usher at a movie theatre when a fight broke out in the men’s room. He attempted to break up the fight and was pushed into a marble wall, and suffered a brain injury. He was diagnosed with a cerebral concussion as a result of the accident and eleven days later a workers’ compensation doctor announced that he was fully recovered. His wife claims that although he went back to work. Her husband suffered from headaches blackouts, and fainting spells following this accident.

The second accident occurred in 1959 in Nassau, when he suffered a debilitating back injury while at work. The back injury changed his lifestyle and caused him to plummet into a state of deep depression. His wife stated that it was this deep depression that led him to take his own life. The workers compensation board disagreed. They contend that this man was suffering from many issues that affected his mental stability long before he took his own life. They contend that he was suffering from mental illness before he had his first work place injury in 1945.

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According to the research provided in a study released last week, the Army could reduce the chances of a soldier suffering from brain injury simply by having them wear a helmet one size larger and containing slightly thicker padding.

The study in Long Island found that as little as a Enlarge Closen eighth of an inch more cushion could decrease impact force on the skull by up to 24% – a substantial difference when determining whether or not brain trauma is on the menu.

Brain injury is a common occurrence on the battlefield of Afghanistan, and the Army is looking to verify the findings and then to move toward issuing larger helmets with the extra padding. Concussions are common among troops knocked about inside armored vehicles or flung to the ground while on foot patrols.

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